


Is He or Isn't He?

by JayBarou



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Cat Loki, Fluff, Lokitty, M/M, Mischief, Shapeshifting, Where did that plot come from?, cat!Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor was fighting Loki again, but this time when the dust settled, Loki had left something behind, or maybe he had stayed behind? The avengers need to find if a cat is a cat or something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is He or Isn't He?

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon who craved lokitty on frost-iron.

“Put him into prison then!”

The Avengers were gathered after Thor called for them, but Thor was not the only one at a loose. Nobody was quite sure of what to do in that situation.

“I can’t do that, friend Barton, I can’t face Asgard if there is the slightest doubt. I couldn’t bear the shame of having been tricked again.”

The bundle of black fur didn’t bother to move from where it was curled on one of the free chairs. It had its ears lifted, so it was not as unconcerned as it seemed.

“It could be a trap. We could be attacked as soon as Thor goes to Asgard,” Steve added to the conversation.

“There must be a way to trace a magic signature even when the magic is not in use; I have been trying to build something similar for a while.” Tony poked the animal, but he didn’t get a reaction.

“But how are we going to control a maybe-Loki in cat shape until you build it?” Bruce planted the important question.

“With this.” Natasha took a metal band out of who knew where and closed it tightly around the cat’s neck before it knew what was happening. “If he shape-shifts he will strangle himself.”

The black furred creature had awoken with the unwelcome intrusion. He tried to take the collar from his neck, and it was a close call, but Natasha put the thing a little tighter and it was impossible for the animal to remove it. All six avengers stared as the cat left the chair scratching his collar like any cat would.

“Wouldn’t it break if he shape-shifts?” Clint asked.

“It is made of Tony’s gold-titanium alloy, so I don’t think so.”

“My... Why do you have that?!” Tony said indignated.

“Do you want an answer or your voice in your current pitch?”

“Is both a valid answer?” Tony risked.

“How long will it take you to build something like that?” Steve tried to rein them in.

“A whole new design based in alien technology that no human has ever seen?" Tony grinned. "Three days.”

“So what do we do with maybe-Loki?”

Natasha smirked in a way that made everyone fear for their lives if she ever turned evil. “If he wants to be treated like a cat, that’s exactly what we will do.”

And that was how a sandbox appeared in the middle of the common floor next to a plate of dry cat-food. After that, the bets on the nature of the cat were only logical; Clint said that Loki wouldn’t step so low as to use the box, and the cat _did_ use it once he stopped sulking and trying to take the metal collar off, so he couldn’t be Loki in his opinion; Bruce was not convinced. All the bets stopped every time Thor came into the room.

The god had taken to speaking to the malnourished black creature as if his brother was listening. Tony thought that the huge Thunderer hunched over the cat, asking him to be reasonable and calling him brother was hilarious.

Every time it happened, the cat had a look of contempt and boredom so genuine that it only made Tony laugh harder. Steve mentioned that the cat was not reacting adversely to Thor calling him brother, which was another point for the not-Loki theory.

***

Hours later, a shout from the ventilation system alerted the Avengers of Clint’s position, again. The heroes jumped into action immediately, used as they were to sudden attacks from their enemies. Clint’s shout had been more scared than pained, though, so the Avengers listened closely to the ventilation apertures.

“You Satan in fur! The hell did you get in here! Turn those freaky eyes off, okay? No. Don’t look at me like that. My air ducts, my rules; you can’t come and act like you own this.”

The Avengers didn’t try to rescue their teammate and the one-sided conversation continued even though Clint had climbed off the ducts holding the cat. The animal didn’t even meow once; he only trotted to his plate of food, which was still half-full but had an empty spot in the middle. Clint filled the plate without even thinking about it.

“He isn’t Loki,” Clint said as Natasha smirked from her spot on the couch.

***

Steve’s growl of annoyance was not uncommon, especially when Tony was in a good mood. Tony was in his workshop, so he wasn’t responsible this time. Thor poked his head in to know what had happened.

“Don’t you have a whole couch? Why here?”

Thor saw that Steve had been typing on his laptop; Steve made friends with everyone he encountered, so he had been delighted of finding that things like Twitter, Facebook and Vine existed. Tony was always frustrated with Steve’s ability to adapt to new technology. However, Steve could not tweet right now; the black cat was laying on the keyboard and Steve’s hands were trapped under the animal.

“You have been here for one day, why are my computer, my clothes and my sketchpads full of black fur.” Then Steve noticed Thor on the door. “He IS Loki. Has to be. No cat can be this annoying.”

“Captain, I thought that with your strength you’d be able to lift a mere cat,” Thor mocked walking into the room. “And I’m starting to think that’s not my brother. I don’t think Loki would trust anyone enough to sleep on their hands.

Steve wriggled his fingers and the cat looked up, as if offended. It stretched, typing nonsense in the process, and proceeded to curl up again, this time purring directly on Steve’s lap. The super soldier looked distinctly uncomfortable, but didn’t push the cat off his lap, since the little angry fur-ball had already attempted to bite off Thor’s fingers once. Steve looked pleadingly at Thor, but he walked away before Steve had a chance to ask for help.

***

For all the cat napped during the day, the heroes should have expected a bout of hyperactivity during the night, but they hadn’t. When they retired to sleep the animal ran across the halls like he had a ghost on its tail, and it sounded like that too. The heroes didn’t think much of it; most of them had taken care of cats at some point in their lives, or they had slept in the house of someone who had, so they knew it was normal.

Normal didn’t mean calming. Not at all, so at 4 a.m. Bruce appeared in the workshop of the other insomniac in the tower and dropped the cat. Tony was going to complain, but he saw Bruce and the tips of his ears were a strange greenish hue that Tony would rather avoid. The cat stayed.

The cat shouldn’t have stayed. Tony had been working in the magic-detecting device, but the cat kept standing in his way when he walked through the workshop. Once Tony gave up and he started working on the coding of the device, sitting, the little shit started to jump on tables and benches. Then he took to throwing things from the edge of said tables and benches.

Tony was not concerned; most of the things he had there were resistant enough for a fall of several floors, and if the thing was on the floor, it wouldn’t fall more than that, so he didn’t even pick things up from the floor. Also, seeing the cat play with the rotating screwdrivers was amusing.

Tony looked at the cat closely. He wasn’t a kitten, which would have been more convenient if he wanted sympathy, and he didn’t have the smooth, clean fur that anyone would expect from a prideful god. Clint also mentioned the scars on the cat’s ears and the whole street-cat look to prove that he wasn’t Loki. Tony wasn’t convinced.

 A scratch of something that sounded like crystal against one of his tables called his attention back to the cat. The black nightmare had pushed his prototype for the magic-scanning device to the edge, which didn’t have a proper casing yet.

“No! Not that one! It will…”

The cat looked at Tony. Tony looked at the cat. Tony was too far, and the cat _knew_.

_Crash_

“…Break.”

Tony stood up, but the cat didn’t cower. Tony picked up the remains of the project and threw away the little crystals that couldn’t be repaired. Dum-E would clean the smallest shreds of crystal, but for now the floor wasn’t a good place to go bare-footed or bare-pawed. Tony reached to pick the cat up and he tried to escape, probably expecting anger from the inventor, but Tony pinched his nape and didn’t let him go away.

Tony cat-handled the feline until he could look into those green eyes. “Loki, you are an asshole.” Then Tony carried the cat with him to an office chair. “However, I should have expected that from you.”

Tony put his feet on the desk and leaned back, getting comfortable; it was obvious that he wouldn’t get much done with the cat in the workshop. He let go of the pinched skin, put the cat on his abdomen and pressed the part of the shoulders gently so the little panther couldn’t move much. The claws were pointy warnings through his t-shirt, but Tony didn’t relent and the claws stayed still.

“Bruce should have known better than to let you into the workshop, really. Must mean you have convinced him too.”

Tony scratched the cat behind the attentive ears, but he didn’t relax.

“I’ve wanted to know what goes on in your mind since Germany.” Tony moved on to pet the cat from the whiskers to the point where he was restraining him. “And if this is you… I think that the Loki we have been fighting has been hiding his wounds. Thor said something about, I don’t know animorphs or something like that, and how some things are more evident.”

The cat struggled to leave.

“Stay still. The floor is covered in crystals, you don’t have anything else to destroy, and the way you have been moving your ears, you won’t convince me that you don’t understand me.”

Slowly Tony released the cat and he looked at the floor wistfully, but didn’t jump. Tony counted the lack of claws in his face as a bonus. Loki, because Tony was convinced that the cat was Loki, sat on his haunches, perfectly balanced on Tony.

“I don’t believe you are trapped. You could still transform into something smaller, get rid of the collar and kill us while we sleep, so there is something more…”

Tony went back to petting the cat. Even though he thought that he was Loki, even though the fur was not silky and smooth, but looked almost ill, Tony was distracted and that meant that he was going to fidget with whatever was in hand.

“There is always something more with you. The invasion… your ridiculous speeches… your fake death…”

Tony was cradling his fingers through the cat’s body, head to tail, and he wasn’t aware of the cat closing his eyes, leaning into the touch or spreading his digits with each stroke.

“There must be a reason why you want to stay here.” Tony did notice when the cat went from sitting to laying on his chest, but he didn’t stop the mindless rubbing. “But I can only think of two reasons. You either want to stay close to your brother or you want protection.” Tony was avoiding touching all the places where something like a scar could be seen and he dipped his fingers until his nails scratched skin where the fur was thick.

The cat hid his forelegs and started purring, surprising both of them. Tony stopped and looked into poison-green eyes, the purring had stopped. Tony laughed, shaking the cat slightly, but not enough to make him move.

“Fine, I won’t tell.” Tony approached his hand again (he was not stupid, he had seen the cat bite when Thor tried to touch him), and he waited until the cat head-butted the hand to continue. “You’d get better results if you used words with us.” The cat looked at him skeptically one last time before purring again and ruining the effect of the glare.

***

Bruce had managed to get his night of sleep, but peace was not very common in the tower. He was starting his yoga routine with the forward bend when the assault on his person started in the form of four paws on his lower back. Bruce assumed that the cat would fall with his next move, but the cat climbed to his shoulders.

The well-balanced cat managed to stay on top trough all of his exercises, and he trotted with him when he went to get breakfast. Clint was hoarding the coffee in the kitchen, Tony was trying to steal some, and Natasha was already drinking from a mug and enjoying the display.

“He can’t be Loki,” Bruce announced. “Loki can’t stand the Other Guy, or me.”

Tony picked up the cat.

“He is Loki,” Natasha said certainly.

“Do I look like a villain?” Tony said stroking the cat. “You make me look like a villain, Loki,” he told the cat.

“Your goatee does that for you, Tony. You don’t need a cat to look evil.” Bruce laughed.

“Yeah, and he is not Loki.” Clint took all the coffee in two cups and kept hoarding the mugs. “Loki wouldn’t let Tony pick him up like that.”

“We have an understanding, right, Loki?”

Clint and Bruce huffed without taking Tony seriously. Natasha was a different matter. She only waited until Clint and his two mugs left for target practice and Bruce disappeared through the stairs.

“What are you doing, Tony?”

Tony shrugged and let the cat on the floor. “I’ve been checking with Jarvis. There have been no magic acts: no doors suddenly opening, no teleporting, nothing missing…”

“Loki always has one more plan,” Natasha warned. Both of them looked at the floor, where the cat was calmly cleaning himself. They didn’t doubt that the cat was listening.

“I agree with you, but he could be doing something nefarious while we are here, cat-sitting his pet.”

“Or he could be trying to spy on us.”

“What is left to know about us that he can’t find with a quick Google search?” Tony said in reference to Nat’s leak of the SHIELD files.

“Plenty”

“Nat!” Tony gasped dramatically. “Are you implying that we kept secrets from SHIELD?” And then said in a stage-whisper: “Not in front of the kid, Nat.”

Natasha seemed bored of Tony’s antics, but she pressed the issue. “Tony, you are playing with fire, like always, but consider that it is not only your life you are playing with anymore.”

Then she left Tony alone and considering if he was making a mistake. He looked at Loki. “If you want protection you have to give us something to work with, Loki. She is right. I can put myself in danger’s way any day, but I won’t risk them.” Tony turned to make more coffee. “They are superheroes, not gods. What can be out there to push you into hiding? And how can they be of any good against something that powerful.”

In that moment the local ray of sunshine interrupted Tony’s monologue.

“Tony! I see you have company.”

Tony felt the cat rubbing against his leg and he picked the animal up. They had thought that the cat _was_ Loki when he disliked Thor so obviously, but then they noticed that the static electricity was shocking the cat whenever Thor approached. And all of them had suffered a small shock from Thor at some point so they couldn’t blame the cat for avoiding Thor.

Tony picked up the cat because… he could. There was some communication, some sense of trust, in the gesture. Tony had started because it relaxed the cat, but it went both ways. Tony had read about pets for people with PTSD, and that’s what he blamed for the soothing feeling of petting the creature in his arms.

“Maybe he _is_ Loki, after all,” Thor teased. “He was too clingy as well.”

Tony noticed a sudden movement of the cat and he was sure that he’d have his claws out if he wasn’t in Tony’s arms at the moment.

“Maybe you shouldn’t say that. What if the cat is Loki?”

“Nonsense. I had my doubts before, but now I see how wrong I was. The Loki I know doesn’t let anybody touch him, much less in any affectionate way,” Thor said flippantly. “As I said, he was once very clingy, and one day he closed off to everyone but Mother. I think he didn’t understand our friends' jokes. He started to avoid people touching him; I don’t think he remembers how to be anything but abrasive now.” Thor smiled at Tony. “If he was Loki, I’d have to think-”

The cat jumped from Tony’s arms and promptly left the kitchen and jumped to the couch where Thor couldn’t see him.

“I still think that there is something of my brother in that cat,” Thor frowned at the retreating tail.

“Well, he did bring the cat with his hocus pocus. Loki couldn’t call a cute soft ball of rainbow and ruin his Emo style.” Tony smiled bleakly still looking at the couch. “Say, Thor, is there something worse than your brother out there?”

“Why do you ask?” Thor asked as he looked through the cupboards for something edible.

“I’m improving the suit, and I want to be prepared,” Tony said facetiously.

“Don’t be worried! There are much worse beings than my brother indeed,” Thor said happily. “But they don’t know that Midgard exists and, why would they be interested in attacking this planet?”

“Hey, big guy, way to call us worthless,” Tony smiled, but it was only his public smile.

Thor stopped rummaging “That was not my intention.”

“I know, Blondie.” Tony sipped his coffee, more worried than before. “I know.”

***

Tony went back to building the magic detector. It would have been suspicious if he didn’t. Loki stayed and cemented everyone’s belief that he was just a cat; Bruce came one day with a brush, Steve had bought a bell that never touched the cat’s neck and treats under the table became common from everyone’s hands but Natasha. She wasn’t forgiving or convinced. In just a few days the cat looked much healthier.

After that time, Tony was only a few hours away from finishing the new magic detector, but Steve had managed to drag him to the common rooms to have lunch with everybody. Everything was going on fantastically until they were surprised by an explosion somewhere close, although they couldn’t see where it or the following ones came from. It was Clint who brought their attention to the rather small person sitting on the edge of a nearby building when they looked out of the windows.

He was throwing something like fireworks in the air. There was no explosion, but the sound was exactly like one,  big one; Tony knew how explosions sounded.

The team jumped to action, Steve directing Thor to entertain his brother while the rest of the team prepared to fight. “Tony, you-”

“I nothing, Cap. My suit is still out. We made the magic detector my first priority, remember? I‘ll set the comms, but I’m grounded.”

Steve nodded and left to get his shield. Natasha threw a dirty look to the cat at Tony’s feet and she left too. Tony looked out of the window: Thor was already there. Tony set the channel and connected the communicators of the active Avengers.

“-ool me, brother,” Thor shouted.

“I’m not your brother,” Tony could hear much lower; it was definitely the voice of the trickster. “And I didn’t come for you, but I have something for your shield-brothers.” The Quinjet flew lower in that moment and pointed its arms to the god.

“I think you’ve convinced Natasha,” Tony chuckled. “He is… a clone, right?”

A small chain rattled next to his right ear and a much richer voice than the one in the comms sounded on his left. “He is.”

Tony turned around. The muffled voice of the Cloned Trickster was saying something like: “You are too dull to understand it, but maybe all your friends combined can have a single good idea.” But Tony’s blood was ringing on his ears and all of his senses were on the tall, still green eyed god who was much, much, more sexy than his feline form.

The other thing that was ringing in Tony’s ears was the realization that he was alone, in the Tower, with his enemy, while said enemy distracted his friends. Tony was sure that he had read the intentions of the God perfectly, even though he was a cat, but right then it was nearly impossible to remember why he had been so sure.

Loki reached for Tony’s shoulder and turned him back to the window, the same window Loki had _opened_ with one Tony Stark some time ago. Good. Good things to remember in that moment when Loki was behind him and a very long fall was right in front of him, less than a mile from where the Avengers were dealing with the clone.

“Look closely, I won’t repeat myself.”

“Looks like you already have,” Tony joked, fixing his eyes on the rooftop instead of the fall.

Clone-Loki threw something that Thor caught and said something else, but he was too far from any of the microphones. Behind him, real Loki, who had both of his distracting hands on Tony’s shoulders, was explaining.

“I’ve given Thor one of the infinity stones. Thanos is looking for them and nothing will stop him. Odin has the gauntlet to make them work but his vault has a fissure that I have used before, Thanos will find it.” The Quinjet shot and clone-Loki fell from the edge. By the time Thor tried to follow, the leather-clad man had disappeared. More or less, since he was still just behind Tony. “I’ve had to steal this stone from Hydra, so don’t lose it and don’t make it public. Slip this information in the conversation, Thor knows most of it if you manage the miracle of making him think. Thanos will destroy all the worlds he can find, especially Earth because you defeated his army once;” Loki made a dramatic pause. “You are not risking your little heroes; they will volunteer when they know. But don’t let the Avengers suspect you. Don’t dare let me down, Stark.”

Tony turned around without putting any space between them, because who cared about distance or safety when the enemy was so attractive? Damn. Tony wanted to touch those cheekbones, and trace that jaw, with his lips, so much skin to touch… Tony was thinking too much about touch and too little about what the trickster had done. Tony had asked for more and Loki had given more, but how much was he willing to give, exactly? And how much was Tony going to ask of him?

“I think you should call me Tony if you are going to keep purring on my lap and whispering secrets on my ear.”

Loki gave him a knowing grin. “Tony.”

And Tony really couldn’t help himself when his name sounded so good in Loki’s lips. He stretched his hand to the unfairly tall man and buried his fingers in long, dark hair. Loki didn’t cut his hand on the spot; which was good, and sent a tendril of exhilaration down Tony’s spine. Loki turned to the hand without taking his eyes from Tony, much like the cat did.

The inventor had _Touch Starved_ flashing like a neon light in his mind, but he didn’t care in that moment. Instead he used his other hand to cup Loki’s neck and trace that pale cheek. Loki’s hands lifted to cover his, as if to prove himself that he wasn’t delusional.

Tony was not sure of where he was going with this, where they were going with this, but he was going to discover it; even if he had to unbuckle that Asgardian monstrosity himself.

Or not.

Because his teammates certainly knew when to interrupt. Fortunately they were noisy and Loki dislodged himself from Tony’s fingers (what a loss) before turning back into a cat. He slipped on the collar in the process smoothly.

The Avengers were there in a matter of seconds and they were very interested in finishing lunch and telling Tony all the details of how Loki had given them a bright stone before taking a blow and disappearing again.

The stone was in the middle of the table; they all recognized it as the glow from the Glow-Stick of Destiny. Tony saw Thor thinking harder, Natasha had seen him too, so she was the first to ask.

“Thor, you know more.” Natasha’s questions always had the peculiarity of not being really questions.

“I think I know this stone. But it can’t be true.”

“What?” Tony pushed.

“There are legends, about the Infinity Stones, jewels of great power.”

“Stones, as in, plural?” Tony pretended confusion masterfully. With a bit of luck Nat would think that he was only lying to interrogate Thor with her.

“Six in total. With the power to manipulate time and reality itself when used together.”

“Why would Loki give this up?” Bruce asked.

“An even better question: the glow stick was in SHIELD’s hands, and then it disappeared. We thought Hydra had it. How did it end up in Loki’s hands?” Tony suggested.

“I know that Hydra had it,” Clint explained. “We tried to retrieve it, only managed to rescue a pair of mutants, but this was there. Loki must have stolen it.”

“And the only reason to give it up is if it is a poisoned gift.” Steve summed up.

“Like a time bomb but with magic?” Tony asked at Thor.

“No, the Stones don’t work like that, and without the receptacle that held it, this stone isn’t very useful.”

“A receptacle? So, the stones need receptacles?” Tony poked further.

“Indeed. Even together, they would be useless without the Infinity Gauntlet.”

“Am I the only one who suddenly wants to start a collection?” Tony said cheerfully.

“A… Collection.” Tony could almost see the Windows hourglass in front of Thor’s face “Odin sent the Aether to a Collectionist, as far from the gauntlet as he could. Maybe…”

“Is he big and scary?” Tony was too impatient to let him finish.

“He is resourceful, the Collectionist.”

“Enough to scare Loki?” Natasha narrowed her eyes, but she was more interested in the answer.

“No, Loki would trick him easily. Why?”

“Well, if there was someone big and scary after my stone I would want to get rid of it too,” Tony explained as if it was obvious.

“Who would want those stones, Thor?” Natasha asked where Tony had left it.

“Wait, but what if this goes further back in time? Why would Loki give this up now but not during the invasion?” Steve was making more connections than Tony had with the extra information.

“Thanos…” Thor finally whispered.

“What?” Clint prompted.

“Thanos. He is a barbaric conqueror, he hails from Titan. I don’t think Loki would fear any less than him.”

Tony felt pressure and warmth on his lap. He had almost forgotten about Loki with the genuine questions going on. He dropped his hand to scratch him behind the ears and it was scary how comfortable and automatic it felt.

“Thor, if that guy wants this stone, he will want the others and the Gauntlet. Do you know where to find them?” Bruce made the logical connection.

“The Gauntlet… It might be in Odin’s vault.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“Okay, just checking.” Tony looked at Thor in the eye. “The same Vault the Jotnar used to ruin your coronation?”

Thor groaned. “I must tell the Allfather. The Gauntlet could be already gone and we wouldn’t know!”

“I say you hammer that to dust and end of the story.” Clint suggested.

“Usually I would like that idea, but I can’t do that without destroying half of the galaxy with it.”

Then it was Clint’s turn to groan. “And what good is all of this, then? What is the plan?”

“We get the stones and we kill him before he kills the human race.” Thor said like only a warrior could.

“Why do you assume that we can’t negotiate with him? Or destroy the gauntlet?” Steve, always so optimist.

Tony, however, had done his part, so he didn’t really pay attention. He was busy concentrated on fingers, fur and skin. The question directed at him came out of nowhere.

“What are we going to do about the cat?” Natasha moved an inch back to glare at the insulting animal who had tricked her.

“Loki conjured it, maybe we can bargain to give it back in exchange of information.” Bruce proposed.

“Did you see him when we brought him in? I don’t care who the previous owner was, Loki stays.” Tony stated matter-of-factly.

“Tony, we established that the cat is not Loki. Do try to stay awake during our reunions.” Steve seemed to be in a good mood.

“I know what you said, but I’m calling this little guy Loki anyway.”

“That will be a chaos.”

“I know. Fitting, right?”

The cat purred louder and the Avengers desisted, it was Tony’s cat now, and nobody touched Tony’s things, or friends, or pets.

***

Since it was Tony’s pet, though, it was only right that the nocturnal hyperactive cat was confined to Tony’s room during the night. Neither the cat nor Tony had a problem with that. And if Tony got used to going to sleep with pale skin or black hair between his fingers, if his sleeping schedule was better and his nightmares less frequent, if he enjoyed drawing senseless patterns on certain canvas… well, it was his business and only his business until things changed.


End file.
